Online Ready: Designing Culturally Competent and Impactful K-12 Online Learning

Abstract

Despite the school library profession’s long-standing and prominent role in technology leadership and technology-enabled learning, as well as pre-pandemic growth in K-12 online education, the ability to design and facilitate fully online K-12 instruction is not an integralcomponent of school library preparation programs (Green et al., 2017). The nation’s abrupt pivot to remote schooling due to COVID-19 highlighted this knowledge gap: school librarians had little time, support, or energy to acquire or deploy effective practices forculturally competent and inclusive online instruction, or digital environment development, despite having unique skills in technology tools and information literacy skills that help online learning flourish (McLaughlin & Resta, 2020).  The profession needs to move away from emergency remote teaching and toward a more sustainable, flourishing, and responsive vision for online K-12 librarianship.